Metroid Prime 4, Super Robot Wars, Netflix/WB Merger, and Improving Christmas
Purely Academic #25
It’s time for another installment of Purely Academic, a variety podcast hosted by Jonathan Lack and Sean Chapman. You can subscribe for free in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Fair warning: this month’s episode starts out as a major bummer, what with news of the Netflix/WB merger and the pricing madness around RAM spelling doom for both Hollywood and the gaming industry, topics we dive deep on to make ourselves extremely sad. But once you get past all that, we start having some fun, as Jonathan reviews the flawed but extremely fun Metroid Prime 4: Beyond on Nintendo Switch and Sean talks at length about falling down the Super Robot Wars rabbit hole, which is an absolutely amazing segment. Then we finish things off with a very misanthropic – but very funny – Monthly Ten segment in which Jonathan lists 10 ways to improve Christmas in 2025, most of which involve taking aim at traditions people love. Pa rum pa pum pum.
Enjoy!
TIME CHART:
Intro: 0:00:00 – 0:08:50
Netflix/WB Merger: 0:08:50 – 0:26:50
Star Wars News: 0:26:50 – 0:35:45
Steam Machines: 0:35:45 – 0:51:42
RAM Madness: 0:51:42 – 1:14:38
Call of Duty and Game Award News: 1:14:38 – 1:54:35
Metroid Prime 4: 1:54:35 – 2:38:02
Ultraman Cosmos: 2:38:02 – 2:55:00
Super Robot Wars: 2:55:00 – 3:24:04
Monthly Ten: 3:24:04 – 3:52:10
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Original Music by Thomas Lack https://www.thomaslack.com/
Interesting take on Prime 4 being flawed but fun. The "flawed" part seems to come up in every conversation about htis game lately, and I kinda wonder if the long dev cycle set expectations so high that people were looking for something revolutionary instead of just a really solid entry in the seires. I had a similar experience with another long-awaited sequel where I endd up appreciating it way more on a second playthrough when I stopped comparing it to some imaginary perfect version in my head. The Super Robot Wars section sounds fascinating tho, might skip straight to that timestamp.